


When You Love Someone But It Goes To Waste, Could It Be Worse?

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor reveals why he became interested in his line of research and confronts his feelings towards his father. Whale admits why he'd been tempted by Gold's orders regarding Greg Mendell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Love Someone But It Goes To Waste, Could It Be Worse?

Victor had lain in a haze the first few days, barely knowing what was happening. He was aware that Gerhardt sat by his bedside, talking to him, but hardly registered what he was saying. Alphonse never visited him. Once Victor asked Gerhardt why, and Gerhardt explained that he was at the bedside of their mother, Carlotta, who was stricken with the same fever that had befallen him.

Gerhardt was at his bedside the day that Victor’s fever broke. Slowly, he opened his eyes, took in his surroundings.

“Where’s Mama?” he asked his brother.

Gerhardt shook his head. “Mama didn’t make it.”

***** 

Alphonse did not speak to Victor and barely spoke to Gerhardt as they gathered together to lay Carlotta Frankenstein to rest. As Gerhardt placed a reassuring hand on Victor’s shoulder, their father stooped to throw the first clod of earth into their mother’s grave.

“You still have both your sons,” one of their father’s friends said to him. “Victor survived. Be thankful for that.”

Alphonse snorted, turned his back on them all. “That does not comfort me right now.”

“He doesn’t mean it,” Gerhardt whispered to Victor. “He’s just upset right now.”

Victor wanted to believe him, but deep down he felt sure that his father had not forgiven him for having survived, nor that he ever would.

*****   
It was his mother’s death that had led Victor to decide on his line of research. Many times throughout his childhood he had wondered whether Alphonse would have loved him the way he loved Gerhardt if Carlotta had survived the fever as he had. In time, he came to believe that the only way he could ever get his father to love him was if he could somehow find a way of bringing his mother back to him.

“Nothing can awaken the dead,” Gerhardt had said when Victor first broached the subject with him.

“I’m going to find a way,” Victor determined. “If I can find a way to bring her back, maybe our father will love me as he loves you.”

“I’ve been trying to talk to him,” Gerhardt reminded him. “It was not your fault that Mama succumbed to the fever while you recovered. Maybe I will make him understand that in time.”

“You have been trying to convince him of that for fifteen years, Gerhardt,” Victor pointed out. “I think it is highly unlikely that you will succeed now.”

Gerhardt had to acknowledge the truth of this. “But what is it that you hope to achieve? Do you really think that it will be possible to bring back our mother?”

“One day, in time.” Victor informed him. “I intend to start with the recently dead, and then once I have achieved success with them, I plan to work up to those who have been dead for longer. There need be no death in the world any longer, Gerhardt. When I am done with my work, the name of Frankenstein will be synonymous with that of life. Just think of the advances that I intend to make, of the progress that will be achieved for the world.”

“And you really think that you can do this?”

Victor nodded. “I am confident of success.”

“Then I am confident in you too.” Gerhardt embraced his brother. “I’ll keep talking to our father. I will try and make him understand how important this work is.”

He hadn’t succeeded, of course. Alphonse remained convinced that Victor’s research was foolish. As Victor prepared to leave for his commission, he wondered whether his father’s response would have been more favourable if he had ever explained to him that the reason he had initially decided to undertake this research was so that he could bring his mother back to their family. On the whole, he suspected not. In some ways, he felt that it would be almost a relief to leave his family behind, to no longer have to face the disappointment on his father’s face every day, or Gerhardt’s hope in the face of what Victor was now suspecting would be certain failure. He could escape his father’s blatant favouritism of Gerhardt; and if he left now he knew he could retain his close relationship with his brother without allowing resentment to build up.

When Rumpelstiltskin came to him, Victor had finally allowed himself to believe that there was hope at last, that his research may be able to progress after all. Soon, he would be able to reunite his family, and from there, he would change the world. Death need be no more; Victor would bring life.

***** 

Afterwards, he would claim that he had been frozen to the spot, unable to intervene any earlier to prevent Gerhardt from killing their father. But Victor had to ask himself in the hours after it had first happened, was there a small part of him that had not wanted to stop Gerhardt? Could he have called him off earlier, could he have saved his father’s life? 

In the darkest part of Victor’s soul, was there some part of him that had wanted to see his father punished for the way he had always favoured Gerhardt, and for the way he had always treated Victor himself?

And if this was so, which of them was truly the monster? Gerhardt, who couldn’t have known what he was doing? Or Victor, who had known exactly what Gerhardt was doing and had done nothing to stop it? 

It was so easy to stand back and watch while Gerhardt attacked Alphonse, knowing that that was all it would take and the father who had despised and humiliated Victor, who had attempted to suppress his potential, would do so no more without Victor himself having to do anything about it. At long last he was free of the man, free to carry out his research, to fix Gerhardt.

It was some time before Victor consciously realised that he had never once thought of trying to save his father.  
***** 

 

Which was the kindest thing that he could do – to keep on trying to fix Gerhardt, or to end his suffering as Gerhardt himself had wished? Victor had kept asking himself over and over again – why had it happened like this? Was it because Gerhardt’s own heart had been destroyed and had been replaced with the one from Rumpelstiltskin’s land, was that why Gerhardt was no longer himself? Or was it some kind of irreversible damage caused by the amount of time that he had been dead?

Who was Victor really helping by bringing Gerhardt back to life? Gerhardt, or himself, to ease his own guilt at the part he had played in Gerhardt’s death? He was not helping his father; Alphonse was gone to him now. And how would Gerhardt feel once he was fully himself again, to become fully aware of what he had done? Was it a kindness to allow Gerhardt to live with the knowledge that he had killed his father?

If it had been just the monster, maybe Victor could have carried out his wishes and shot him. But the remorse he had shown had proved to Victor that the real Gerhardt was still in there somewhere. Did the real Gerhardt not deserve a chance to live? That was why Victor could not do as he had asked. He was determined to make up for what he had done. Gerhardt’s hands may have struck the blow, but it was Victor who was truly responsible for his father’s death, and for his brother’s, and Victor who must atone.

***** 

It was easier in some ways when he was just James Whale, M. D., the man who had followed in his father’s footsteps to become a doctor because he knew it was what was expected of him. That man did not have to live with the blame for the deaths of his family, that man still had hope. The name of Whale may not have been synonymous with that of life, but it also was not linked with that of monster. When James Whale tried to fix people, there was hope.

Ruby was right; in some ways it had been better when none of them knew. Regina had given them a blessing rather than a curse. But now that he did know, he was able to focus on his purpose once again.

Yes, there had been a moment when he had considered acting on Mr. Gold’s instructions and letting the stranger die. He thought he needed Mr. Gold. His failed attempt to save Daniel had meant that Regina would no longer be willing to send him back home to his brother (even if she had been able; she had said she wasn’t but Whale was unsure whether to believe her). But Mr. Gold still had magic; maybe he would have some way of sending him back instead.

He’d become a doctor in this life, and a scientist in the other, with the purpose of fixing people. And here he was, seriously contemplating allowing someone to die for his own purposes. That was why he’d left the hospital; that was why he’d been intending to jump. And had Ruby not come along when she did, he knew that he would have.

She had made him realise that he could still do good in the world. In both worlds, if he ever got the chance. So he’d go back, save this guy, and maybe one day he’d have the chance to fix his brother again.


End file.
